26 Sh-boom moments on a stormy day

Gray and hazy mist draped the landmarks I saw from my window but it was not depressing.  If I could slash 55 years from my accrued summers, I’d stand in the rain, stomp on deep puddles and shout and make merry like a child. Music playing in the background completed my tableau vivant.

 “Letty, what were your favorite sh-boom moments of yesteryear?” asked my friend.  (Sh-boom moments pertain to those occasions filled with gaiety and spontaneity gathered by people and music, when life could be a dream, like in a song.)

 “On a rain-soaked day like this?” I asked.

 “Why not?” she argued.

I dug into my archives and found 26:

1. Dancing waters at Luneta Park in the late 1950s.  I was barely knee-high and was completely bowled over.  Fairies must have swooshed their magic wands on the water.  It rose and fell in Technicolor, dancing to John Sousa’s marching band music.  The fountain took a life of its own.

2. Trio Los Panchos, Xavier Cugat, Tito Puente.  Latin music at its best.  I sang Spanish love songs to lull my father to sleep, thus “El Reloj, Jurame, Sabor a Mi” were staples in my repertoire.  I loved watching my parents dance the cha-cha, rumba and tango to Cugat’s and Puente’s hip undulating rhythmic tempo.

3. Ricky Nelson at the newly constructed Araneta Coliseum.  Everything smelled new and high-tech inside, the first world-class event venue that opened in the country.  At the time, anything that was located in Quezon City was considered upper crust but it was far from where I lived in Caloocan.  However, there were fewer cars on the road then so we got to Cubao in good time. Ricky’s face was more gorgeous than his singing but we screamed nevertheless like crazy fans.  When he sang, “I know that someday you’d want me to want you,” I went bonkers. 

4. Bye Bye Birdie, the first live performance on stage that I watched in New York in 1960.  The story was taken from Elvis Presley’s stint in the army.  What a delight to discover that there was entertainment outside the ballet, the piano, the zarzuela and the radio broadcast of Severino Reyes’ Mga Kuwento ni Lola Basyang. 

5. My Fair Lady with Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison on Broadway.  When the movie version featured Audrey Hepburn with Rex Harrison as Professor Higgins, I imagined myself warming my hands in a makeshift hand warmer and singing like Eliza Doolittle, “Wouldn’t it be loverly?”  Audrey handled the transition from a gutter girl to a refined lady with more élan than Julie.  Of course, Audrey’s singing was dubbed.   

6. The Beatles Live at Rizal Memorial stadium.  Everything went wrong in this concert but it was a marvelous night listening to all the Beatles ballads in the company of giggling girlfriends and our handsome dates. 

7. Sound of Music on Broadway and the movie version. This was when “standing room only” and smoking were allowed in downtown theaters along Avenida Rizal.  Many generations were raised singing “Do-Re-Mi” and for the first time, nuns were depicted as daring and willing to take risks outside the cloistered walls.

8. Camelot on Broadway but the movie version was much more poignant with Richard Harris competing with a lovestruck Franco Nero for the love of Queen Guinevere.  If torn between two loves, whom would I have chosen?  King Arthur, hands down.  When Richard sang “How to handle a woman?  Love her, just simply love her,” I envisioned meeting my King Arthur someday dismissing the notion that “the sign of true love is letting go.”  Hah!  I won’t let go. 

9. Five ‘n’ Fives at the Nile Club on Dewey Boulevard.  This singing group from Italy caused a stir when they introduced Italian love songs to the local audience like “Legata ad un granello” better known as “Ti voglio culare, culare...”  The lyrics escaped us but it had a romantic and catchy tune so we simply sang along basing it on how it sounded like to our unaccustomed-to-Italian ears.

10. Bolshoi Ballet at the Meralco Theater. The maiden performance of this world-renowned ballet company in the Philippines inaugurated the plush building of Meralco.  We dressed to the nines and my gallant escort wore his dark tuxedo that added a Gatsby like elegance to the evening.

11. Prima ballerinas Natalia Makarova, Margot Fonteyn, Yoko Morishita, and Alicia Alonso at the Cultural Center Philippines.  Each one performed the tandem role of Odette/Odile in Swan Lake.  It made me gather 101 reasons to love the ballet.  Makarova defected to the west because she wanted to dance without the restrictions of a repressed country; Fonteyn must have found ballet as a way of expressing her sadness at some of the curved balls thrown in her personal life while Morishita proved that a diminutive physique was not a downside to arms moving like ripples on a brook and expressing the anguish of an unrequited love.  Alonso was Cuba’s stout advocate of the performing arts and she fought to get recognition and support from the revolutionary government of Fidel Castro.

12. Man of La Mancha was the last musical I caught on Broadway before I left Washington DC to fulfill “an impossible dream” i.e., get married.  I was filled with idealism and enthusiasm, a good attitude to carry when embarking on a change in status from a Miss to a Mrs. 

13. Sammy Davis Jr.  He came to Manila for a one-night performance.  He was the compleat performer:  dancer, singer and standup comedian.  He established immediate rapport with the audience and exuded confidence belying his years of frustration over the discrimination against Afro American entertainers in his native land, America.

14. Frank Sinatra, the undisputed chairman of the board who sang with ease and impeccable timing in Tokyo and again in Melbourne.  He dressed and defined what style really was: a way of living showing courage and discretion.  He was the only singer who took time to praise both the composers and arrangers in all his live concerts.   

15. Phantom of the Opera.  I watched this musical 32x, every week, when my husband and I played hosts to ten power couples at a time.  Instead of throwing a lavish inaugural ball to mark the opening of the flagship hotel of the Sheraton chain in Australia, he invited chairmen, CEOs, and presidents of big Australian conglomerates to an intimate sit-down dinner in an exclusive restaurant that was literally a door away from the theatre where the Phantom was playing to a sellout audience.  The dress circle was exclusively cordoned for our party.  Did we tire of watching this musical?  No.  But it did get quite grueling when Christine and the Viscount singing “All I ask of you” invaded my dreams.  I still have the whole score memorized in my head.

16. Barbra Streisand sounded as crisp and as incredible as her recordings.  When she dedicated a song to her only son, it stirred all the maternal emotions in me.  She sang about protecting her son from “the sadness in his eyes, give him courage in a world of compromise and help him cross the bridges that she had burned.”

17. Michael Jackson in Manila.  I bit my lips because of the exorbitant, pricey tickets to his concert but he didn’t disappoint.  He brought his own stage, props and what seemed like hundreds of technicians, dancers, light and stage support, a first in Manila concerts (that was only repeated when Luciano Pavarotti brought his own stage to Manila).  The crowd went crazy and we stood on our chairs to get a good view of the entire show.  He was a dynamite.

18. Paul Anka sang of young love and dreams.  I watched him again in Las Vegas, tanned with a clean-shaven head and the years of singing and composing beautiful songs had rendered him an interpreter of good times gone by.  The Kodak theme song Good Morning Yesterday” and the song he wrote for Frank Sinatra My Way had earned him his place in the Music Hall of Fame.

19. Repertory Philippines.  Every season brought on stage a meringue of drama and musicals that fed the soul and the spirit making me laugh and cry and dance and sing.  Performing arts found champions in this array of dedicated artists. 

20. The Cascades.  Their first long- playing album “Rhythm of the Rain” was a sellout and teenagers easily empathized with them.  When the group performed at Hard Rock Café, it was packed with baby boomers exhibiting no short-term memory loss that night; we recognized, sang, clapped and tapped their toes to each infectious tune.

21. M. Butterfly.  A stage drama on Broadway.  The first time I watched character actor John Lithgow onstage.  The story is about a French diplomat who falls in love with a Chinese opera diva, marries her and has a child with her.  The diva turns out to be a man who was a spy planted to extract crucial information from him.  How could the diplomat be such a fool?  “When you’re in love, you only see what you want to see,” recited a forlorn Lithgow.

22. Turandot in the Forbidden City, Beijing in the late 1990s.  The first time a major opera was allowed inside the grounds of the emperor’s palace.  Unfortunately, the opera production didn’t carry any famous tenor or soprano but the opulent stage, the costumes and the sheer number of the cast made this a rare experience to watch.  There was the bonus of visiting wonder-heritage sites around China like the Great Wall, the underground terra cotta soldiers (at that time, we were allowed to go down to the dungeon pits to see at close range the thousands of soldiers in different battle gear and formation), the old Moslem village, the river cruise to mountain sceneries that were the popular subjects of water color paintings, the farmers paintings and the weekend markets filled with Chinese curio, jade, porcelain, silk, cords, concubine shoes and other items traded by merchants along the Silk Route.

23. Chad and Jeremy sang of the pitfalls of young love and it felt good to be able to sing about them and not feel any tinge of regret or sorrow.  

24. Gypsy Kings at the Wolf Trapp Center in Virginia, a fabulous picnic ground where everyone was encouraged to sit on the grass, drink and eat and watch this singing gitanos perform.  They fired up the audience to a fever pitch that no one sat down but danced and twirled the whole time they were playing all their best selling rumba catalana, salsa and flamenco music like Bamboleo, Un Amor, A mi Manera, etc.

25. Samson and Delilah at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.  This biblical story was set to opera and had a famous aria by Camille Saint-Saens, Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix (my heart opens to your voice).  A tragic story of love, betrayal and redemption.

26. Basil Valdez. His voice has not lost its timber and power.  What a treat to listen to songs of love and longing composed by one of the Philippines’ prolific composers, George Canseco, and interpreted by a marvelous singer.  And Richard Tann – I remember him being a guest in a variety show; he enthralled me by his deep and gentle voice.  I wish the recording studios had transferred his cassette recordings to CDs.